Good Morning Fire Eater
by Xyliette
Summary: For the prompt 'sailing'. Set S2, Derek and Addison are advised to spend time together, so Derek plans an outing. Derek/Addison


**_~-~-~-~-~-~  
Good Morning Fire Eater  
- Copeland  
~-~-~-~-~-~_**

_"You should spend time together. No phones, no work, no interruptions."_

Damning words, Addison decides, blindly following the hazy yellow lines coated with the early morning Seattle dew as they fly by the passenger side tire. She can tell the black tread needs to be updated, but this is Derek's old piece of crap vehicle, and it's got nothing to do with her, so she shelves it.

Like everything else.

"Where are we going?" Addison demands, hands fastened together on top of her favorite fraying jeans, attempting to hide the nerves that arose this morning before dawn when Derek awoke her with a kindly whispered request to get dressed and that they'd have breakfast in the car. Breakfast was black coffee from an ailing thermos no longer capable of its job requirements, and she can still vaguely sense the straggling minuscule remnants from his endeavor in the "kitchen". Everything is annoying this early in the day, and her tone indicates as much.

"Spending time together," Derek spews again, the seventh time, teeth clenched as tightly as they were the first. He could kill their therapist, and he would, but for appearances sake he has to see this through to the bitter end. There needs to be catastrophe on such a level that no one will survive the incident.

"We could do that at...the trailer," Addison reminds him, neck craning to lean against the moist window, condensation trailing formidable paths down the thick glass. The first drop that touches her clammy flesh causes a distinct shiver, running from the top of her rosy cheek down through her spine, settling with a burst of butterflies in her stomach.

For a brief moment, moisture clings to her lashes, loathing that Derek even desiring to be near her reduces her emotions to this state of inconceivable, trembling insecurity; alternately hating that it's now a state she is well accustomed to.

"Just..." Derek begins, flared reactions secondary in her presence, eyes firmly planted on the winding road ahead. "We'll be there soon."

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**

"No," Addison adamantly declines, digging her designer heel more steadily into the wavering dock.

"What? You love sailing, you used to..." Derek murmurs to himself, stalking forward without her.

Past tense, Addison notes. She used to love a lot of things. She used to have a shadowy idea of the woman she was. Not anymore.

"I'm on call Derek, I can't go out there. There's no service." Addison refuses, legs striding to catch up. She's always chasing him. It's their one constant, but it's never as familiarly comforting as she hopes it will be. "I have a three day old baby in NICU fighting for every-"

"You always have babies in the NICU," Derek rebuttals. He doesn't even know why he's bothering. It's his day off, and magically hers too, and this is what he picked. He's going out on the boat with or without her, it makes no matter one way or the other.

"This one-"

"They're always special," Derek interrupts again, reaching the boat he chartered for the day, which included joining this godforsaken club, so he may as well enjoy it. He takes a deep breath, her annoying voice barely registering, and stares out at the glinted, churning ocean. What he wanted to rent, buy, or someday own is an old wooden sailboat, a replica of a former life, used by fishermen, and built to endure the heavy weather of Seattle. What he got was a dark blue hulled, modest 22 foot Catalina made in the 1980's. A compromise from the monster cruisers he is certain Addison is acquainted to, the boats that come complete with showers and stoves, balanced with his bare, creaking need for no frivolities.

There's no radar, no GPS, no auto pilot mode here. Just him, the merciful wind, and his nagging wife. An almost perfect afternoon.

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**

Her stomach rolls into a tiny knot, and as the boat falls into the careless hands of her husband, then quickly unwinds and balls up again. "Peace", however ironic, is leaning dangerously to the left, heeling, and Addison twists around in her spot and promptly heaves the gross coffee from the depths of her insides.

She knew better than to board, knew better than to allow Derek the satisfaction of driving her further from society, further from her sanity. Her anxiety reaches a new high as Derek calls her to come take over so he can open the dimming red plastic cooler. She hasn't had her hands in complete control of a vessel since she was seven, and she'd like to never do it again. She'd prefer greatly to never see another sail, another reminder, but she's stuck, drifting out into the relatively safe space of Puget Sound.

Muscle memory takes the worn tiller, leveling them as Derek strides as far away as he can get, mere inches. She watches for what feels like hours, his feet kicked out in front of him, his blue thermos occasionally rising as he is intent and content to study the weather formations while the sunlight fights to shine.

The silence is only broken by her continual seasickness and the waves crashing into them.

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**

"Lunch," Derek barks, Addison hardly hearing him above her own thoughts, the sea surrounding them on an abnormally aggressive winter day. The rain clouds above promise adventure, consequences, and the last thing she wants is food.

"No, thanks," Addison declines, pushing the sandwich in a clear bag away from her face. It looked homemade, and she'd give about anything to be on dry land, or even stuffed away in the trailer, all of five feet constantly separating them.

"Just peanut butter," Derek persuades, opening her fist from where it was clenched.

"How does this classify as spending time together when you're down below probably catching up on cases, and I'm up here?" Addison questions suddenly, too many recent minutes plaguing her.

"I was reading," Derek corrects, his withering paperback stuffed in his back pocket, ready to be displayed.

Addison snatches the sandwich out of his hand, tossing it onto the damp deck. "You really think I can eat on this tiny death contraption?" she bellows, frustrated that she couldn't bring a book because she had no idea what the hell they were doing. "You think I want to be wasting my only day off out here!"

Derek shrugs, the charcoal sweater on his shoulders bunching, and then takes a bite of his peanut butter and strawberry jam, a chunk of fruit getting caught in his teeth.

"I hate sailing. I know you know that. Maybe you forgot, or maybe you're torturing me, I'm not sure, but I'm done," she announces, flipping the boat in a hostile turn back toward where her good sense tells her the dock is hiding. She hadn't ventured too far, out of fear of her perished skills, but the suffocating fog has barely begun to burn off and there's not a lot of landmarks she can see.

She doesn't know why they're out here at all. Perhaps he is planning a murder-suicide.

Derek shoves her away seconds later, his lunch sliding across the boards with hers as he directs them back out into the nothingness of barren sea and agitated waves. "This isn't about you."

"Oh good," Addison mutters to herself, hand clutching her middle, attempting valiantly to keep from vomiting on his shoes.

"Open that," Derek directs, pointing to the cooler, its lid already half off in his haste.

"Not hungry," Addison argues, rolling her eyes at his inability to notice her immediate state of illness.

"There's some tea in there...for you," Derek groans. A part of himself that he didn't recognize yesterday stopped off at the store and picked up a ginger concoction that she used to rely in New York when she wasn't feeling tip top. He told himself he made it this morning to keep her quieted. "It's probably cold," he warns, having neglected how she was feeling in favor of feeling the sea water rip through his hair.

"Ginger," Addison says to herself, discovering one of her old remedies to fight away just about everything. He's right, it is cold, but she feels soothed instantly, though it's mostly a psychological thing. She sits, wedging herself against the side of the boat, easing into the incessant rocking, rolling.

Derek relaxes, inadvertently brushing her knee opposite him, and grimaces. This is far from fun, far removed from productive. "He told us to spend time alone together," Derek mutters.

"So you picked the one place you knew I wouldn't be well enough to even speak?" She keeps her glance down, fingers running the smooth surface of her pale lilac tea cup. It doesn't even need to be said, she knows the answer.

"I'm trying...to make this work Addie," Derek frowns, his discarded lunch beckoning him as it rides closer to her bare feet.

"I know," Addison sighs into the chilled liquid. He doesn't even know how to try anymore though, with her, and she's not sure either one of them believes his statement as truth or as a matter of conceding victory to the tension, to the exhaustion. It's hard to try for someone that you hate, Addison reckons, diving to a sanctuary below deck where she won't have to see his judging glare, his condescending brow.

Her insides clench as she lies down against the stiffly padded bench, and it's not the best idea for her lack of sea legs, but she knew if she didn't escape either she was going to end up crying, or he was going overboard. And since she doesn't need a criminal charge, she settles for the silently trained sniffling, the heartache that comes with the self-destruction of having her husband always an arm's length away; always residing in someone else's heart.

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**

Dry, cracking fingers tease her toes, dark polish shamefully chipped away. Old, battered hands press into the tender skin of her arch as she pretends to be sleeping. Because he never touches her voluntarily, she always has to maneuver into his once reviving, consoling arms.

"I'm sorry," Derek whispers, watching her cling when the boat pitches to the right sharply. When they can escape the fluorescent, sterile lighting that has become his life; when they can evade the people who have made their story without any of the facts, he finds he's missed her. "Addie-"

Addison, not remotely drowsy, rearranges herself the opposite way, dropping her head onto his legs, sighing when he toys with her tangled clumps of red hair. She can't tell him it's okay, that he's forgiven for all of the flaming hoops she has to keep jumping through, so she does what she can, stilling his movements, loosely meshing their palms.

They're bare, stripped from their escapades, the gambles of battling. The raw, salty air cuts her throat when she inhales. Apologizing once more for her New York indiscretions may literally cut her soul in half, and she needs the little resources she has left. He already knows, she reasons. He wouldn't be here if he didn't, right?

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**

"Maybe next time we should remember your medication," Derek says wistfully, a playful grin creeping onto his face as he helps her back onto the shifting dock hours later, the remainder of their afternoon muddied in hushed repentance and a gentle understanding of their own fragility.

"I get to pick what we do next time."

"I think that's fair," Derek recognizing, reaching out for a worn belt loop, easily pulling her against him, the first inkling of rain dropping onto his nose. They kiss tentatively, getting the lay of the land back down, ignoring the sprinkling of disaster that is beginning to puddle.

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**

"Dr. Shep- Montgomery-Shepherd!" Izzie Stevens yells down the hall, watching the redhead walk casually next to her husband, attire indicating that she has yet to be here today.

"Stevens," Addison nods, arm still looped through Derek's as he reads through a few charts on the counter next to him. They agreed, his hand on her thigh as they wound back through the sea level paths that they'd drop by the hospital, to check on Addison's baby, and then they'd grab some Chinese and curl up in bed.

"You didn't answer any of your pages," Izzie huffs, heart racing from being screeched at all day. "The Bradley boy-"

"Adam," Addison interjects, remembering the light dusting of chocolaty hair, Adam's unusually light eyes.

"His lungs- I couldn't-" Izzie stammers, recalling her shaking fingers. "I paged you."

Addison drops her contact with her husband in betrayal, bile rising. She snatches the records out of the interns hold reading exactly how it came to be that Adam Bradley no longer exists, and how simple it would have been to save him if she could have gotten here in time. Instead she was stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with him. The him who has begun kneading her shoulders, much to the chagrin of the pining nurses, doctors.

Resigned, she shirks out of his grasp, his constant clamp on her life, and begins walking to the parking lot.

It's just another thing lost, another casualty multiplying their failure, but she can't stop the pure, unadulterated hate that brews within. Her minutes at sea weren't worth Adam's life, they weren't even worth the triumph of piecing back together the tiny shards that once used to be her marriage, her life.

"Thai or Chinese?" Derek asks, not oblivious, but ill-equipped to deal with this blow, starting the engine.

"I want to go home," Addison answers dejectedly, scalp pressed against the freezing glass of her window.

"Ok." Derek nods, strapping himself in, not bothering her to ask if she can do the same.

The vibrant white paint spins by her view, shrubs, trees, dusty trash randomly grabbing her attention as the sun falls behind the horizon in a haze of dismal gray. "You need new tires."

**_~-~-~-~-~-~_**


End file.
